


Tell Yourself It's Easy

by PanBoleyn



Series: Winds of Change and Chance [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, other characters appear briefly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:29:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: In which a thief and his daemon make their way onto a pirate ship, and vastly underestimate how hard it will be to get off again.Well, the thief does. His daemon had a feeling this might happen.





	Tell Yourself It's Easy

 

Even when the struggle begins, the young man still seems unprepossessing – his daemon is a little thing, after all, just a pine marten. The cook's daemon is a shaggy dog, but big and strong. But, in a moment when the cook has the upper hand, the young sailor pinned and only just holding off a knife, his dog is suddenly under attack from an identical dog. The only difference between the two daemons is the swirl of gold pattern – like gold dust – on one daemon's left side.

 

 

The young man who had signed on with Captain Parrish's crew as Rafael Arroyo uses the shock of it to turn the tables, and a moment later the cook is dead on the floor, his daemon exploding in a cloud of golden dust. He glances at the remaining daemon, still in dog form. “Well done,” he says lazily, holding up the leather cylinder the cook had been hoping to use as part of his buy-in with the pirates. If Rafael remembers right, the cook was Parrish's cousin, and a confidante of the captain, which means he probably has a good reason for thinking that... whatever this is would be valuable.

 

 

 

“Footsteps coming.” His daemon lifts her head and sniffs the air. “Two humans and their daemons. We've got a minute at most, how are we playing it?”

 

 

 

“Well, you had better lose that look, don't you think?” Rafael says as he tucks the cylinder into his jacket. He turns with a wide smile as the door opens, two men barging through with pistols out. One of them, an older man, looks more like a shopkeeper than a pirate except for his sharp eyes, while the other is basically a human wall. The older pirate's daemon is a hawk of some kind, her eyes as watchful as her human's, while the younger one's is a wolfhound, and huge to go along with her huge person.

 

 

 

Maybe they're easily fooled, maybe not, but it hardly matters. He doesn't have to trick them for long, after all.. “Hello,” he says, bright and cheerful to go with his smile, pretending he isn't staring down two pistols in the hands of presumably hardened killers. “He couldn't handle the thought of what you might do to him,” he continues, gesturing to the dead cook and playing it like a suicide. “I, on the other hand, would very much like to join your crew. My name is John Silver. And I happen to be a very good cook.”

 

 

 

When he glances at his daemon again, she's taken on the form of a fox, black face and paws and silver-grey fur – he's amused that they were both thinking of that, probably because he'd said Rafael Arroyo's daemon was called Plata, Silver. As ever, of course, the pattern of gold remains on her left side, even obvious than it had been on the brown fur of her marten shape or the dog shape she'd borrowed. He scoops her up and follows the pirates across to their ship. He only catches a quick glimpse of the captain, and he doesn't see the man's face, only the huge black hound – or a wolf, maybe, he can't tell – at his side.

 

 

 

Once they're left with Randall the half-wit and his daemon, a grumpy cat nearly identical to the pet cat at her side, John's daemon chitters at him in annoyance. Just in case, she's careful to use Irish when she says, “We don't know how to cook so much as an egg. And what name am I using this go-round?”

 

 

 

“It can't be that hard, Irial, and anyway, Nassau's less than a day's sail from here. Once we're off the ship, we find a buyer for whatever's in the cylinder, and we vanish. Knowing how to cook is irrelevant.”

 

 

 

“Irrelevant? That was what you said in St. Petersburg. Do you remember how that worked out?”

 

 

 

“That was five years ago. And as for a name, I doubt we'll be here long enough for you to need one.”

 

 

 

Irial sniffs, unimpressed. “John Silver's daemon is called Emilia, if anyone asks,” she says firmly. Her human's personas are based in the forms she takes, after all – best to have a complete one. John eyes her thoughtfully but doesn't ask any questions. Truth is, she has a point. She usually does. Still, Emilia? Damned English, he never will get used to how they name their daemons, even if he and Irial are quite practiced at playing English by now. Or Spanish, but really, that's cheating, because they grew up knowing how that worked even if it's not how Iri was named.

 

 

 

“Completely cheating,” his daemon agrees complacently, draping herself over his lap. John scratches her between the ears and wonders idly what Nassau is like. Even though they won't be there long, it should be an interesting place to see.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

Upon reflection, John's first clue that things were not going to go as easily as he might have hoped should have been Max's daemon. He's certain that most people look at the feline on her shoulder or on her lap and think, oh, a housecat with a bit of an exotic look makes sense for a pretty mulatto whore. But John has made something of a study of daemon forms, probably because his own daemon simply... hasn't settled, for reasons unknown, and he knows better.

 

 

 

He can't name a species, but that little cat is a wildcat, a predator as much as any larger cat would be. One of Irial's favorite forms, aside from trying every possible fox form that she can or preferring to sleep in cat form when it won't be noticed, is the pine marten she'd used when he was Rafael Arroyo. Pine martens are small and adorable, and no one knows just how tricksy they are, how good at surviving.

 

 

 

Foxes are tricksters too. There may be a pattern in Irial's preferred forms, though they aren't quite sure how the cats fit in. But then, John's never said he was anything but a trickster. Looking into Max's eyes, he sees something not exactly unfamiliar. Not quite the same, no, but a certain... shared methodology, maybe. Who sees danger from a harmless pretty boy? Who sees a threat in a whore?

 

 

 

He could use a local partner, after all, and she managed to get the damned cylinder away from him so, really, it isn't as though he has a choice. Or at least, not one he's willing to make just yet.

 

 

 

Or so he tells himself at the time. It's a far less convincing argument when he sees Flint literally beat Singleton to death with his bare hands. Possibly more alarming is his daemon, the huge black hound, or maybe black wolf, fighting Singleton's bear till she collapses in a shower of golden dust. John thinks the daemon is certainly more _confusing_ than Flint, if nothing else. The men whisper that she's a hellhound, which is just ridiculous, but she does look like a dog in some moments and entirely wolf in others.

 

 

 

As Flint stands, half covered in blood with his daemon at his side, spinning a tale of riches beyond count to have this crew following him blindly where they'd been about ready to hang him by the neck from the mast, well. John's breath catches in spite of himself – quite apart from Flint being terrifying, and the added problem of actually having committed the theft Singleton was just killed for, John is very, very impressed with the captain's skill at selling a con.

 

 

 

One professional to another, of course.

 

 

 

Irial nips at his ankle, bringing him back to his senses. Right. He has to get back off the ship, meet up with Max and then the buyer she's lined up, and then _get the hell away_ from pirates. This is a goal that gets a lot less simple when across the deck, Flint looks his way. From this far, John can't make out the color of those eyes, but he definitely can read the look he sees there.

 

 

“Oh fuck,” Irial says by his feet, and really, that does about sum it up.

 

 

He's hitting the water facefirst, Irial shifting immediately to a seal to help him not drown, when it occurs to him that this is really becoming quite a spectacular mess.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

They still aren't sure if Flint's daemon is a wolf or a dog. She's huge, and jet black, and while she mostly looks wolfish, the broadness of her frame and something about her muzzle reminds John of some of the fiercer hounds he's seen. But mostly she looks like a wolf, and he can understand why people think she's a hellhound, once he's seen her up close. Once her jaw has been closing around his Irial's neck, not biting deep, not yet, but with a very clear promise that she could.

 

 

 

It had been almost impossible, John knows, for his daemon to resist the temptation to shift into another form. And in spite of the bravado he'd shown, his first reaction once Irial had been released had been to scoop her up and cuddle her. He hadn't cared, in that moment, what Flint or Gates or Billy thought of it, he'd just needed to hold Iri tight. And, in truth, the weaker they think he and Irial are, the better. It's why Irial didn't shift, after all.

 

 

 

Weak but useful becomes their running theme, informing on the last remnants of Singleton's mutineers, getting a cooking lesson from the captain of all people. His maybe-a-hellhound daemon sits off to the side all the while, watching them with silent disdain. It makes Irial bristle, but there really isn't anything they can do about it, which John reminds her every chance he gets. It would be a lot more trouble if she watched them thoughtfully, like she and Flint did after John tossed Flint that butcher knife.

 

 

 

Being disdained keeps them alive at any rate, although it also gets them chained up in Eleanor Guthrie's office when the _Walrus_ sets out after the _Andromache_.

 

 

 

Eleanor doesn't much care for their company, and while that cat is too damned watchful for Randall's dimness to be entirely for true, this allows them a measure of privacy. If Irial is careful to always call him John and he always calls her Emilia in return, well, that's just staying in their roles. They talk in quiet Irish, because it's not really an issue if someone knows they speak it. The issue is if someone else can speak it. They can't know for sure with Randall and his cat daemon, but the odds are decent. Eleanor Guthrie and her sleek jaguar don't seem to care, on the few occasions they come in while John and Irial are still talking, so he doesn't worry too much.

 

 

 

“She and Vane have the same daemon, only his is black,” Irial says one day after Eleanor and the jaguar – whose name might be Lysander, if they heard right – have left the room. Randall and his cat are sleeping right now. “They say neither of them had settled when they'd started fucking, both of them pretty young, apparently. And then they settle as the same thing?”

 

 

 

“How did you hear that? I told you, no slipping off here!”

 

 

 

That their bond is stretched is an asset, which means keeping it quiet if they can. It's why John hadn't let Irial spy on the mutineers even if it would have given him useful information. But even when he can't use it in the moment, it's a good skill to have. John reminds himself of that every night he wakes choking on silent screams, remembering the pastor's cold hands on his daemon, what had almost happ-

 

 

 

Irial bites his fingers, knowing where his mind is going, and once he looks at her again, she explains herself. “I don't have to go all that far, and I know we don't want anyone to notice, but I've noticed that a lot of people here can do it. Pirates probably train themselves to it, for one less weakness, like we trained ourselves to make it longer. Anyway, people talk in the tavern, especially after she and the jaguar went off raging over Max and her little wildcat.”

 

 

 

They aren't happy, about what happened to Max. She made her choices and they aren't to blame, but it isn't a pleasant fate. Still, at least she'll probably live to tell about it – they might too, but their odds probably aren't as good. That's a familiar enough situation, but one of these days luck will run out. John leans his head back against the wall. “Emilia, don't overthink it. Anyway, not our business. We just have to live long enough to fill our pockets with gold and get the fuck out of here.”

 

 

 

“I don't have pockets.”

 

 

 

“Ha-ha, you are so very amusing.”

 

 

 

Eleanor's jaguar becomes ever so slightly more relevant later that day, when she locks herself in the office, in a fury over the trouble her ban on Vane has caused. Irial whispers in his ear while the woman and jaguar argue, about how of course it comes to this, big cats are all territorial, aren't they? There's something in that, but it isn't what John is really thinking about when he chimes in. “At the risk of overstepping my bounds, I think you should agree to Captain Hornigold's terms.”

 

 

 

Eleanor and the jaguar both whirl on them, the big cat growling low in his throat, but John keeps his calm as he keeps talking. Meanwhile, Irial sits beside him, seemingly just as unruffled. “Guilt is natural. It also goes away if you let it. Losing your life's work, that doesn't go away,” John tells them, and while he's never really had a life's work to lose, he knows this is true and he is, for once, being entirely honest.

 

 

 

“And what do you know of it? “ the jaguar snarls when Eleanor says nothing, pressing her lips together.

 

 

 

“We know you have a place here, and you need to secure it. You've already lost them, much as you hate to admit that. They won't take your protection, and destroying yourselves won't do them any good,” Irial says in reply.

 

 

 

They listen, but John really shouldn't be surprised when Eleanor comes back wanting his help with a scheme to save Max anyway. Actually, once he's filled in on the plan – and Anne Bonny and her wolverine daemon are quite an unsettling pair – it's not a bad one. Involves a good deal more blood than he has a taste for, but that part isn't his job anyway.

 

 

 

He'd known all along that helping Eleanor would be a good idea. He just mouthed off at first to get her to say it. He has a feeling it'll make her less likely to renege on it. And it turns out he's right. Anyway, he supposes he's glad Max is out of her bind as well, even if she only got in this mess by stealing from him. It all works out for everyone except a group of raping thugs, and isn't that an excellent result from a bit of a con?

 

 

 

“We are going to die,” Irial says the night they set off after the Urca.

 

 

 

“Oh, don't be so cynical,” John tells her.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

They don't die.

 

 

 

They do, however, almost die. Although they don't come as close to it as Flint. John can't say what possesses him, when Flint and his daemon tumble off the side of the ship. “Her name's Mona, I heard it,” he remembers Irial saying, the words echoing in his ears for some reason as he dives after Flint into the water. Irial follows him of course, and the moment she hits the water she's the largest sea lion she can make herself, big enough to drag Mona to the beach. John can't change size, but he's a pretty good swimmer, so once he gets a good grip on Flint, he makes it to shore relatively easily.

 

 

 

He tells himself all the way there that he's only doing this for a bargaining chip. And then, well, the rest of the crew is there and there's no opportunity for that. It's Flint who saves them, and John can admit that, even if he'd _thought_ the whole 'stealing a warship with two men' was a con. Apparently it's not, and John is now convinced that Flint and his Mona are fucking batshit crazy. He isn't going. They are not going. They can walk to St. Augustine, they can do it just to prove Flint wrong, the crazy bastard.

 

 

 

Flint is already in the water, but Mona hesitates just as she steps into the surf, looking back at them. Irial is streaking toward her before John even has his coat off, and stretched bond or not, what can he really do but follow after that?

 

 

 

“Do as I say, when I say, or I'll kill you myself,” Flint says, which is, of course, why it turns out that almost the very first thing John does is something that has Flint pinning him against the wall, a moment from killing him. Oddly, this time Mona's jaws don't close around Irial, although she has her pressed into a corner, growling low and close.

 

 

“You almost got us killed,” Flint says, and the quiet in his voice is almost more threatening than a yell or a snarl would have been.

 

 

“Almost, almost!”

 

 

 

“For a fucking bauble!” Oh, and there's Flint's face twisting into a silent snarl, John should have known the calm was a veneer.

 

 

 

“It's a boatswain's whistle. Look. Doesn't it make more sense for us to prompt the lookout to come down, than for us to go up there after him?” John is expecting this bit of logic to help his situation, because from what he can tell Flint is a man of great rage but also strategic and tactical skill, which is why he's disappointed when all it gets him is a shift in expression to irritated thoughtfulness and a lack of growling from that fucking giant wolf of a daemon.

 

 

 

Wait, no, he isn't disappointed. He's angry, and on some level -

 

 

Well, being hurt is fucking ridiculous, Flint is absolutely right not to trust him for the long term after all, and yet. Dufresne already indicated that John is the reason they didn't kill Flint before he came round, hasn't it even occurred to him that - “You are truly amazing, you know that? We're both better off now than we were two minutes ago, yet you're angry about it because it didn't happen your way. Might you consider for a fucking moment that your distrust of me is completely unwarranted? I warned you about Billy. Was I right? I found you over Mr. Gates' body, and did I do anything but defend you? When you were sinking to the bottom of the sea, who do you imagine it was who dragged you onto that beach?”

 

 

 

Something flickers in Flint's eyes that John can't quite read, but he's letting go, looking less angrily thoughtful, and that is something of an improvement. “Brace yourself,” he finishes, “but I'm the only person within a hundred miles of here who doesn't want to see you dead.”

 

 

 

There's sounds then from above before Flint can respond – assuming he was going to – and they have to get back to the mission at hand. It feels almost anticlimactic, except for the slightly concerning question he hears Mona ask. “How did you get me to shore?”

 

 

 

 

She seems to be asking Irial, or anyway Irial answers. “Trade secret, Captain's daemon.”

 

 

 

Sometimes, John's daemon is at least as much of a mouthy little shit as he is.

 

 

 

Clearly, his point didn't get across to Flint, that or it did and his spitting rage is an act to complement John's cooperation ploy. He's pretty sure it's the former, given that Mona is silent, staring at Irial in a way that, when John thinks about it later, makes him feel decidedly odd. Although, really, isn't it a better plan than just surviving torture? And again, there's that idiotic flicker of hurt in the moment before he grabs the bottle and knocks their first captor out.

 

 

 

It occurs to John only then, when he's facing one man with a lynx daemon and one with a hunting hound of some kind, that he didn't entirely think this through. Flint's still tied to the chair because John obviously can't get him clear, Mona chained to the wall – their first captor's daemon, some kind of monkey, had done that, while the hound had kept Iri cornered – but he's decided to help, it seems. “Shoot this one,” Flint says, nodding to the man with the lynx.

 

 

 

“He'll get to the pistol,” John says tightly, jerking his head toward the other one even as he watches Irial slip up behind the hound, who is no longer paying her any mind. She isn't going to – not with Flint and Mona here to see – is she? Fuck, he thinks she might be, but in truth, he really doesn't have a better idea.

 

 

 

“This one has more scars, more fights. You've got a better chance against this one.”

 

 

 

“Not if he shoots me first,” John says, hating how his voice has gone higher than normal. But really, violence never has been his best skill. Maybe he should work on that, if he survives this little mess.

 

 

 

“Then beat him to it. Do it, quickly.”

 

 

 

“So I actually have to fight him?” Right, fine, John knows it's a stupid question almost as soon as he asks it, but he isn't exactly at his best.

 

 

 

“Well, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen!”

 

 

 

Later, John will consider that the sheer vehemence of Flint's reaction is rather funny. In the moment though, he dodges an attack and fakes one of his own, just enough distraction for -

 

 

 

A hunting hound, it turns out, is no match for a tiger. Irial breaks the hound's neck with a bite and a fierce shake; it vanishes into golden dust as the man before John falls dead to the floor. John swipes up the keys to unlock Flint and Mona, and if his fingers also curl round a black-beaded rosary so like a set a long-ago boy had clung to as the last remnant of –

 

 

 

Well. No one is able to notice but Flint and Mona, who are too busy staring as Irial slides back into her fox form. John gets them free and looks at Flint with a cool calm he doesn't feel. They're still in danger, and his daemon has just revealed one of their biggest secrets so as to not die. “ _That_ is what I thought would happen,” he says, pretending it had all been part of the plan.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

There's something about Flint, John decides. First, he's honest with the man, bluntly offering an alliance of convenience where normally he'd charm his way into being viewed as a permanent new ally. And now, with Flint asking just what he's thinking, getting himself beaten up, John actually tells him a true story. Not all the truth, of course, but while Solomon Little is one of those names John weaves through many of his tales, this is the first time he'd told any true one about him.

 

 

 

There are other stories, but still. When Flint leaves him to his own devices, again with just Randall and his two cats, pet and daemon, for company, John leans heavily back against the wall. _Fuck_ , he aches everywhere, but it will be worth it. As he'd told Flint, it's not about being liked, it's about being necessary. Being the distraction from the everyday awfulness of it all. Of being an orphan in a dreary city, most of them settlers' children who knew all too well this wasn't really their place, and a few like he'd been, all but prisoners somewhere that should've been home.

 

 

A pirate ship isn't all that different than a boys' orphanage. The unwanted, the runaways, the lost – John may be new to all this, but he isn't new to criminal worlds. They're all somewhat alike, in the end, and Flint's skepticism only tells John that here's why a man who can weave a tale good enough to have men cheering his name moments after crying for his blood can't keep the men cheering. Or at least following along. He can get their blood up, but he can't keep their spirits up. He needs someone who can, and if this works, John will provide.

 

 

 

At least, unlike Flint, he doesn't have to do this long term. “A few weeks, maybe,” he says to Irial, and maybe he's tired or maybe it's the ache. Maybe it's the truth still lingering like a bitter taste in his mouth, or the rosary in his pocket, but for a moment his English accent slips, and he notices Randall's daemon's ears twitch. He swallows hard, bites the tip of his tongue, and he's back in his role. “A few weeks, we'll have our share, and we can be back in the wind.”

 

 

 

“And where are we going to go?” Irial's voice holds the same lilt that his had briefly lapsed into, and John wants to scream at the sound of it.

 

 

 

“I don't know. We don't usually decide ahead of time, do we?” is what he says instead, voice tight and soft.

 

 

 

“No...”

 

 

 

John closes his eyes and falls silent. Irial gets like this sometimes, just like every now and then she bristles at the name he calls her. It's not that he doesn't _blame_ her, but they are what they are. They're drifters, and what ideas of home they may once have had – in Spanish stories and songs only half-remembered now, in eyes blue as his own, two daemons always in reach of each other and two pairs of childish hands, in a freckled face framed by truly awful ears, a red fox daemon letting Irial copy her and cuddle – were lost to them long ago, and they know better by now.

 

 

 

They have no names and no home, and Irial has no true form, only a swirl of golden specks along her side carried by every form she takes.

 

 

 

What is the point of wanting things to be otherwise?

 


End file.
